LA-Skyline-Dirk-Dallas

There’s something about airports that seems to bring out a heightened sense of how vast and different the world is. Among the chatter of languages and cultures are people: strangers, aliens, citizens of some country, all traveling from one place to the next, perhaps for business, perhaps for leisure, and to some extent, in search of something more.

But there is One who unites us all despite our differences and agendas. Paul reminded the Ephesians, and reminds us today, that in Christ, there are no language barriers, no cultural divides, no itineraries with unknown destinations.

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household” (Ephesians 2:19 nasb).

Once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, how we identify ourselves is irrelevant. We become His children, assuming an identity that is in and of itself wonderful. And not only that, but He tells us we are citizens and saints and are of the household of God.

God calls us His own. Through the death of Christ, God created a new body made up of believers who built their lives on the foundation of the gospel. This revelation was critical to the Gentiles who lacked the covenants of promise that were bestowed on the Israelites. In this profound verse, Paul is telling them that they too have a part in the inheritance of Abraham through the blood of Christ. Jesus came to break down the dividing walls of hostility and unite those who had put their trust in Him.

This truth is significant to us even now, when we live in a day and age that seems to increase division all the more. God makes no distinction through race or color, gender, intelligence, political affiliations, or through any other category that divides a people.

I think of a sweet woman who has seen far more years than I, and shared her heart for the Lord with me while on a flight. She knew that God not only created a new body (the church) but a new building, with Christ as the chief cornerstone, and one day we will see the culmination of that body in physical form. God put in us a longing and desire for a place called home, and that destination is heaven. She knew where she was going.

And how simple that destination change is. While we must be born in a certain country to obtain its citizenship, we must be born again to become citizens of heaven. And the visa? The stamp of the blood of Christ.

Let us live as ambassadors for Christ, passing through this earth temporarily until the coming day when we will dwell in our permanent home in the heavens. Let us share the gospel with strangers and aliens in this land, that they too might be a part of the household of God.

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20 nasb).